‘Coal to Diamonds’ by Beth Ditto and Michelle Tea
Beth Ditto’s memoir is PUNK, which, after learning about her through the pages of this book, I think is probably what she would see as the best possible compliment about her work.
‘Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me’ by Ellen Forney
An association between artistic creativity and mental illness is something many of us take for granted without questioning which came first or why the two should be linked. In her new graphic memoir, cartoonist Ellen Forney tackles that question in light of its impact on her work as an artist with Bipolar I Disorder.
‘All We Know’ by Lisa Cohen
Lisa Cohen’s lush biography, All We Know (Farrar Straus and Giroux), is a staggering labor of love that offers a triptych of three women of a queer persuasion. Cohen sets this story in the early 20th century, giving her audience a catalogue of the largely forgotten life during that time. Her subjects–the great intellectual Esther Murphy, the celebrity connoisseur Mercedes de Acosta, and the fashion maverick Madge Garland…
‘Folsom Street Blues: A Memoir of 1970’s SoMa and Leatherfolk in Gay San Francisco’ by Jim Stewart
Jim Stewart brings together stories, poems and photographs that gives readers of today a glimpse into the early days of the leather community and the beginnings of a post-stonewall gay community in San Francisco.
‘The Vicious Red Relic Love’ by Anna Joy Springer
Springer uses journals, letters, myth, and doodles from feminist class lectures to create a interlocking puzzle map that guides readers on an intoxicating journey through the dyke community in 90s San Francisco.
‘Small Fires’ by Julie Marie Wade
In Small Fires, Julie Marie Wade, who won a Lambda for her memoir Wishbone, considers family and memory with a poetic eye and unabashed tongue. With her carefully chosen words and a studied deliberateness, Wade proves unafraid to delve into her past—to skillfully reconstruct the events of her youth, from the horrifying to the sentimental to the self-conscious and beyond.
‘Halsted Plays Himself’ by William E. Jones
Los Angeles-based artist and experimental filmmaker William E. Jones has brought together a variety of materials that will help, hopefully, to revive an appreciation both for Halsted’s work as well as of the man himself.
‘Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures’ by Julie Marie Wade
Like the Ocean which literally
